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A.P.McKinlf:-y 


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Reprinted  for  private  circulation  from  ^p 

The  Classical  Journal,  Vol.  XV,  No.  6,  March  ig^f 


THE  CORRELATION  OF  LATIN  AND  ENGLISH' 

/ 

A.  P.  McKinlay 
Southern  Branch  University  of  California,  Los  Angeles 


The  question  of  correlating  Latin  and  English  is  of  immediate 
concern  especially  to  a  classical  association ;  for,  if  we  are  to  believe 
the  newly  elected  superintendent  of  schools  at  Portland,  Oregon, 
the  president  of  Reed  College,  Mr.  Flexner,  and  Dr.  Eliot,  Latin 
is  on  the  toboggan.  The  writer  believes  that  Latin  can  maintain 
itself  by  taking  unto  itself  allies;  therefore,  it  is  the  purpose  of  this 
paper  to  show  what  is  meant  by  correlation  of  Latin  and  English, 
how  to  go  about  it,  and  what  are  the  results. 

In  opening  the  discussion  it  will  be  well  first  to  determine  what 
correlation  is,  or  rather  what  it  is  not.  IMost  good  teachers  of 
Latin  might  well  say,  "Correlation  with  English!  Why,  of  course 
I  correlate."  The  reply  to  a  large  extent  is  true,  but  usually  the 
Latin  instructor  falls  just  short  of  arriving  at  a  full  measure  of 
co-ordination;  for,  consistently  to  point  out  English  derivatives, 
to  demand  much  parsing,  and  to  be  particular  about  shades  of 
meanings,  does  not  go  far  enough.  Even  so,  occasionally  in  our 
classes  some  rare  mind  makes  the  connection  for  itself,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  young  man  overheard  in  the  street  car  to  remark,  "I  tell 
you,  Latin  is  the  'stufif.'  Take  Latin  and  you  won't  have  to 
'chase'  to  the  dictionary  every  time  you  don't  know  a  word."  But 
far  too  often  the  mind  betrays  its  irmate  propensity  for  shedding 
knowledge  as  a  duck  does  water;  so  that  the  general  run  of 
students  finds  its  type  in  a  college  professor  not  a  thousand  miles 
from  here,  who  boasts  that  he  had  six  years  of  Greek  and  got 
nothing  out  of  it. 

If  immunity  against  the  bacillus  of  co-ordination  with  English 
is  the  normal  trait  ef  the  Latin  pupil's  mind,  what,  then,  must  be 
done  to  make  the  innoculation  more  certain  ?    Inject  a  few  germs 

"Read  at  the  summer  session  of  the  Classical  Association  of  the  Pacific  Coast, 
University  of  California,  Berkeley,  California. 

3S8 

G 1 U  9  7 


359  THE  CORRELATION  OF  LATIN  AND  ENGLISH 

of  teaching  Latin  from  the  English  point  of  view.  As  far  as  the 
secondary  school  is  concerned,  Latin  is  really  Old  English  and 
should  be  actually  or,  at  least,  spiritually,  a  part  of  the  EngHsh 
department. 

After  having  determined  what  correlation  really  is,  we  are  now 
ready  to  undertake  it.  To  make  my  explanation  more  explicit,  I 
propose  to  show  how  it  is  done  in  Lincoln  High  School,  Portland, 
Oregon.  That  I  may  not  weary  you  with  too  much  talk,  I  shall 
Hmit  my  discussion  to  the  handling  of  the  sentence.  This  aims 
at  acquiring  sentence  sense  through  sentence  analysis,  sentence 
structure,  technical  grammar,  punctuation,  spelling,  correct  usage, 
and  good  form.  The  Latin  teacher  familiarizes  himself  with  the 
principles  of  the  subject  either  by  taking  a  class  in  first-year  English 
for  a  few  terms  or  by  mastering  the  several  English  outhnes. 

The  first  of  these  takes  up  sentence  analysis.  It  should  be 
started  with  the  earliest  exercises  in  Latin.  It  should  be  developed 
as  the  sentences  become  more  and  more  complicated.  Particular 
care  should  be  taken  to  guard  against  the  idea  that  the  analysis  is 
something  extra,  a  device  to  make  Latin  harder;  the  utiUty  of  the 
method  can  be  made  manifest  by  seeing  to  it  that  the  student  really 
uses  analysis  to  get  at  the  meaning  of  the  sentence.  Especially 
should  he  use  this  outline  in  turning  English  into  Latin.  When- 
ever he  makes  an  error  in  translation,  he  should  never  be  told  what 
his  mistake  is,  but  should  be  required  to  find  it  out  by  analysis. 
This  method  should  be  followed  throughout  the  first  year  and  well 
on  into  Caesar.  In  the  Gallic  War,  day  after  day,  week  after  week, 
every  sentence  should  be  analyzed  till  the  student  becomes  sentence 
sure.  Ten  weeks  will  usually  be  enough  to  reach  this  stage. 
Thereafter  every  relapse  into  carelessness  should  run  hard  up 
against  the  sentence-analysis  outline. 

When  the  student  has  mastered  this  method  of  arriving  at  the 
meaning  of  sentences,  he  is  ready  to  learn  how  to  correct  such 
sentence  errors  as  arise  from  time  to  time.  Plentiful  opportunity 
should  be  given  for  finding  out  errors.  Frequent  tests  and  much 
board  work  should  be  called  for.  In  Caesar,  after  a  lesson  has 
been  read  in  advance  and  then  in  review,  I  always  have  it  put  on 
the  board.     Then  it  is  examined  for  all  kinds  of  mistakes.     These 


THE  CLASSICAL  JOURNAL  360 

mostly  group  themselves  under  such  heads  as  structure,  punctua- 
tion, spelling,  diction,  good  usage,  and  good  form. 

Of  these  the  most  important  is  structure.  Sentence  structure 
involves  unity,  coherence,  and  emphasis.  I  require  all  students  to 
provide  themselves  with  the  English  outlines  on  unity  and  coherence. 
From  these  we  find  out  that  errors  in  unity  usually  fall  under  one 
of  three  heads:  the  fragment  sentence,  the  run-on  sentence,  and 
the  and-and-and  sentence.  We  identify  all  such  and  correct  them 
by  the  outline.  We  find  that  coherence  errors  are  due  to  faults  in 
arrangement,  agreement,  and  connection.  In  arrangement  most 
of  the  trouble  is  caused  by  "only,"  by  the  correlative  conjunctions, 
and  by  prepositional  phrases.  In  agreement  pronouns  often  fail 
to  connect  with  their  antecedents,  and  verbs  with  their  subjects. 
Shifts  in  voice  and  tense  need  watching.  Participles,  particularly 
in  ablative  absolutes,  are  great  offenders.  In  connection  the  whole 
question  of  co-ordination  and  subordination  is  involved.  Here 
comes  the  breaking  up  of  some  of  Caesar's  elephantine  sentences, 
and  the  transmutation  of  parts  into  other  parts.  Especially  note 
the  need  of  turning  participles  into  clauses.  After  unity  and 
coherence  are  well  in  hand,  some  attention  may  be  paid  to  sentence 
emphasis.  The  forty-fourth  chapter  of  the  first  book  of  the 
Gallic  War  with  its  balance,  repetition,  and  contrast,  and  its 
rhetorical  questions  is  a  fertile  field  for  illustration.  Put  your 
students  through  this  mill  and  the  English  teacher  will  rise  up  and 
call  you  blessed. 

In  connection  with  this  work  in  the  sentence  the  Latin  teacher 
has  an  unparalleled  opportunity  to  enforce  the  minimum  require- 
ments in  grammar.  His  students  should  be  sure  in  the  identifica- 
tion of  the  parts  of  speech.  They  should  master  the  noun  uses  and 
the  formation  of  the  possessive;  they  should  know  the  kinds  of 
pronouns,  their  relation  to  antecedents,  and  their  objective  uses. 
In  verbs  they  should  understand  voice,  tense,  and  number;  transi- 
tive and  intransitive;  the  past  progressive,  tense  signs,  tense 
formation,  and  verbals.  They  should  be  familiar  with  the  function 
of  prepositions;  they  should  be  able  to  discriminate  between 
phrases  and  clauses,  between  compound  and  complex  sentences. 


361  THE  CORRELATION  OF  LATIN  AND  ENGLISH 

and  to  classify  subordinate  and  co-ordinate  conjunctions.  This  is 
the  sum  of  the  whole  matter,  grammatically. 

Punctuation  accompanies  sentence  structure  and  grammar. 
The  pupil  should  be  made  to  identify  his  errors  in  pointing  by  rule, 
and  make  his  corrections  accordingly.  The  punctuation  of  the 
compound  sentence  should  be  stressed;  also  of  appositives,  possess- 
ives,  and  non-restrictives.  In  distinguishing  between  restrictives 
and  non-restrictives  we  use  the  Ward  test  as  set  forth  throughout 
his  "Sentence  and  Theme."  To  inculcate  a  feehng  for  the  comma, 
the  semicolon,  and  quotation  marks,  have  parsing  often  done  in  sen- 
tence form  according  to  models  set  by  the  teacher. 

In  no  phase  of  the  work  can  the  Latin  teacher  get  quicker 
action  than  in  spelling.  There  should  be  no  attempt  to  cover  the 
whole  field.  Energy  should  be  reserved  for  the  mastery  of  the 
limited  number  of  words  on  the  spelling  lists  of  the  English  depart- 
ment. The  teacher  should  f  amiharize  himself  with  these  words  and 
with  the  few  rules  concerned.  He  should  put  especial  stress  on 
words  that  no  Latin  student  should  misspell.  Of  course,  there 
should  be  no  definite  assignments  in  spelling;  but,  when  errors 
arise  in  the  course  of  tests  and  board  work,  that  is  the  time  for 
their  consideration.  Mistakes  in  spelling  may  be  classified  under 
several  heads  according  to  the  principle  involved.  Chief  among 
these  is  pronunciation.  No  pupil  who  will  syllabize  and  pronounce 
carefully  will  misspell  such  words  as  "accommodate"  and  "pro- 
fessor." Such  words  often  involve  the  simple  mathematical 
process  of  addition.  Here  Latin  comes  strongly  into  play.  Stu- 
dents who  consistently  misspell  "definite"  and  "benefit"  do  so  no 
more  when  shown  that  the  one  equals  "de"+" finite"  and  the 
other,  " bene "-f  "fit."  Derivation,  too,  should  play  a  great  part 
in  the  slaughter  of  spelling  demons.  The  very  first  time  "  separate  " 
with  an  e  after  the  p  raises  its  ungodly  head,  the  teacher  should 
knock  it  with  a  club  made  from  the  root "  paro." 

Along  with  the  relation  of  words  in  a  sentence  goes  the  under- 
standing of  the  word  itself.  Hence  come  the  study  of  derivatives 
and  discrimination  in  shades  of  meaning.  That  this  field  is  all- 
important  goes  without  saying.     Latin  teachers  who  have  been 


TUE  CLASSICAL  JOURNAL  362 

doing  good  work  along  this  line  should  try  to  interest  their  English 
coadjutors  in  an  article  on  "High  Schools  and  Classics"  in  the 
July  Atlantic  by  Frederic  Irland.  Be  sure  to  read  the  letter  by 
Mr.  Irland  in  the  contributors'  column  of  the  same  issue.  Interest 
your  students  in  such  words  as  ''precocious,"  meaning  "cooked 
ahead  of  time."  Get  on  good  terms  with  your  science  brethren  by 
having  some  study  on  lists  of  terms  occurring  in  their  subjects. 
"Cast  thy  bread  upon  the  waters  and  after  many  days  it  shall  not 
return  unto  thee  void." 

In  the  discussion  of  the  sentence  there  remains  correct  usage. 
This  is  the  part  of  the  subject  ordinarily  least  neglected.  Least 
important  intrinsically,  it  is  most  important  in  the  eyes  of  the 
public.  Provided  that  a  writer  knows  enough  to  use  "don't"  cor- 
rectly, the  world  will  overlook  his  inability  to  unify  and  co-ordinate. 
Still  we  must  do  our  part  to  help  with  correct  speech.  I  provide 
myself  wdth  the  EngHsh  lists  on  correct  usage,  and  whenever  any 
such  solecism  as  "diflerent  than"  occurs,  I  stop  the  recitation  while 
the  class  in  concert  says  "different  from  "  five  times. 

Lastly  comes  good  form.  The  Latin  teacher  should  get  the 
Enghsh  instructions  on  the  preparation  of  manuscript.  He  should 
give  a  test  or  two  early  in  the  term  by  w^ay  of  review.  All  errors 
should  be  discussed  and  then  revised.  After  that  no  paper  should 
receive  more  than  a  passing  grade  if  it  contains  more  than  one 
breach  of  good  form.  First,  careful  instruction;  then,  diligent 
holding  the  class  to  instructions  with  severe  marking  will  work  a 
transformation  in  a  few  weeks. 

Such  is  the  plan  proposed  for  the  correlation  of  Latin  and 
English.  In  its  appHcation  several  points  should  be  noticed. 
First,  it  deals  only  with  the  acquirement  of  sentence  sense.  The 
subject  of  co-ordination  of  the  two  languages  as  Hterature  is  left 
for  another  time.  Again  there  is  need  of  caution.  In  any  attempt 
to  apply  the  scheme  a  teacher  should  use  common  sense,  Aristotle's 
golden  mean.  In  fact,  it  is  not  so  much  a  method  that  has  been 
set  forth  as  a  point  of  \iew,  simply  doing  what  we  always  have 
done,  with  a  more  defmite  vision  of  how  we  can  be  more  helpful 
to  our  fellow-teachers.  Furthermore,  the  instructor  should  guard 
against  making  a  mountain  out  of  a  molehill.     The  chief  requisite 


36s  THE  CORRELATION  OF  LATIN  AND  ENGLISH 

is  for  him  to  master  the  English  outlines.  Then  he  can  apply  them 
incidentally  without  loss  of  time  and  effort.  By  the  tenth  week 
an  average  class  in  Caesar  will  have  pretty  well-acquired  sentence 
sense.  Thereafter  it  should  be  taught  to  get  at  the  meaning  of 
the  text  through  the  Latin  order  with  a  reversion  to  analysis  when 
a  passage  proves  recalcitrant.  Lastly,  the  paper  will  probably  be 
of  Httle  help  to  those  teachers  whose  classes  come  to  them  prepared 
to  understand  and  construct  an  English  sentence.  The  sugges- 
tions are  for  those  who,  like  the  writer,  have  to  meet  the  problem  of 
teaching  Latin  to  classes  that,  as  the  years  go  by,  are  less  and  less 
well  grounded  in  the  three  R's. 

These  are  the  lines  along  which  for  several  years  there  has  been 
co-operation  in  the  EngHsh  and  Latin  work  at  Lincoln  High 
School,  Portland,  Oregon,  What  are  the  results  ?  These  pertain 
both  to  the  faculty  and  to  the  student  body.  The  most  immediate 
effect  became  evident  in  the  English  classes.  A  measure  of  this 
reaction  to  the  attempt  at  correlation  was  seen  shortly  after  the 
plan  was  put  in  partial  operation.  After  the  students  in  begin- 
ning Caesar  had  had  seven  weeks  of  the  drill,  the  superintendent's 
office  conducted  a  grammar  test  in  all  the  third- term  English 
classes  in  all  the  high  schools  of  the  city.  The  tabulated  returns 
showed  that  the  average  of  the  high  school  in  question  was  89  per 
cent,  or  nearly  eleven  points  higher  than  that  of  the  nearest  com- 
petitor. About  half  of  our  EngHsh  III  students  had  had  the 
sentence  drill  in  Latin.  Their  average  in  the  test  was  94  per  cent; 
that  of  the  non-Latin  section,  84  per  cent.  This  showing  appeared 
in  the  face  of  the  unusually  high  percentage  of  foreign  students  at 
Lincoln,  who  ordinarily  have  much  trouble  with  English.  The 
lead  of  this  school  over  the  other  high  schools  was  so  great  that  the 
office  did  not  pubHsh  the  results;  but  its  private  opinion  may  be 
estimated  from  the  fact  that  the  assistant  superintendent  who 
conducted  the  test,  though  tributary  to  another  school,  entered 
his  daughter  and  later  his  son  at  Lincoln. 

The  effect  of  this  demonstration  upon  the  school  may  well  be 
imagined.  The  faculty  have  begun  pulling  for  Latin;  the  EngUsh 
teachers  have  become  its  most  enthusiastic  advocates;  the  head 
of  the  department  of  chemistry  has  put  his  shoulder  to  the  wheel 


THE  CLASSICAL  JOURNAL  364 

by  showing  his  poor  students  to  Ije  non-Latinists.  The  student 
body,  too,  is  reacting.  The  teaching  girls  are  up  in  arms  because 
their  course  does  not  provide  Latin.  This  movement  has  grown 
until,  excluding  the  fourth-year  pupils,  more  than  70  per  cent  of  the 
students  take  Latin.  The  climax  came  this  spring  when  the 
enrolment  in  beginning  Latin  exceeded  that  in  beginning  English. 
The  field  has  been  planted ;  the  harvest  is  being  reaped. 

Whether  the  schools  can  be  immunized  against  the  virus  of 
Flexnerism  is  "on  the  knees  of  the  gods."  The  preceding  plan  is 
offered  as  an  antitoxin. 


6 1 II 9 1 


Lifhomount 

Pamphlet 

Binder 

Gaylord  Bros. 

Makers 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

FAT.  JAN  21,  1908 


University  0(  California  Los  Angele 


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